


A veritable procession of bullshit

by bobaheadshark



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Argestes aka Davos, Canon Related, Drabble, F/M, Fear and self-loathing in a Moncler Vest, I swear this isn't as like dark as the tags make out to be, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reference to Roman's kidnapping, References to their past sexual dalliances, Roman Roy-level misogyny?, it's just Roman dealing with some shit because he hears a firecracker go off
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:21:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29357916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobaheadshark/pseuds/bobaheadshark
Summary: “Roman, you really are a basket case of unresolved issues, you realise this, right?”Gerri’s not looking at him, and he finds that in this moment, he really needs her to. It’s bullshit, this feeling. That he craves her validation like it’s sunlight.—Roman Roy does some thinking while waiting in line atDavosArgestes, and is joined by Gerri. Set post-Turkey.
Relationships: Gerri Kellman/Roman "Romulus" Roy
Comments: 10
Kudos: 32





	A veritable procession of bullshit

**Author's Note:**

> First time writing for this pairing and bashed this out fairly quickly, so here's hoping I got it somewhat right. Taking some liberties with show storyline here because it's been a while since I finished S2. 
> 
> Thanks [van1lla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/van1lla_v1lla1n) for the beta read!

* * *

  
It’s a veritable procession of bullshit, really. The world’s worst people, gathered under one roof, puffing their chests and preening and dick-swinging about who has the sleekest jet or the fastest car or the stupidest investment that’s destined to crash and burn at the slightest speed bump under its shiny little chrome wheels. 

Rome fits right in, of course. 

He’s just shocked, after Turkey, that he doesn’t really care anymore. 

“You’d think the Kardashians were here to offer free blowjobs,” he says to his assistant. Yi Ke is all five foot one of Harvard’s best, packaged in shellac-friendly Upper East Side newscaster vernacular. Rome’s learned that given enough old-fashioneds though, her New Jersey accent comes bowling right on through. She didn’t even roll her eyes when he cracked some stupid bumfuck Weibo joke on one of the many Saturdays they’d been working late.

If pushed, Rome might have to admit that he kind of likes the scrappy little lesbian upstart. 

It’s a little worrying, this newfound sense of empathy.

Yi Ke, on her part, gives a high-pitched steam-valve exhale and stares at the queue in front of them. 

“Unfortunately, Sir, everybody’s got the same level of access as you. Ken and Shiv were directly in the Chalet for the earlier meeting with the Singhs—”

“Assholes did the meeting without me? I should be beyond surprised—”

“They said something about giving you space to recuperate and drag yourself up the ladder of your six-step recovery plan.”

“Yeah, ‘cus we know how well that worked out for him, didn’t we? Depressed polyamoured breakup haircut and pill poppers anonymous in there—”

“I’m just the messenger.”

“Taking a leaf right out of the Reichstag playbook? Cold, even for you.”

“The Reichstag is the diplomatic building in Berlin where the current democratic government still sits. I think you mean the Third Reich?” Yi Kai cocks her head at Rome, and it reminds him of a toy poodle if toy poodles could be fucking lethal, judging from the steely look in her eyes. 

Rome hates that she’s so good at her job. He might actually have to keep her around. 

A long sigh, and he whips his sunglasses off his face to give his best version of slow-dripping disdain. 

“Don’t you have someone to neg or annoy into submission? Shit, what’s the point of being a Roy if I can’t get into the building with our name on it?”

To her credit, she raises an eyebrow, and offers a barely placating tone.

“Right away, _Sir_.”

For a while, it’s the noise of leaves rustling and people chattering. The sun’s even had the audacity to come out, which seems like a mockery given his mounting impatience.

Then, in what must be the world’s worst coincidence, the universe’s unfathomable attempt to babysit him, or fate’s idea of a joke—who should walk in but, of course, Gerri.

It’s not like he knows the way her perfume smells, or anything. Or like the powdery smell of what must be her laundry detergent (does she even _do_ her own laundry?) – it's as familiar as fuckin’ ESPN ringing the phone off the hook trying to get their broadcast rights back from Dad. Nor is it the fact she shuffles more than pushes her way into the line, but the sidelong glances and the aura she has means that people make room, anyway. He can sense, more than see, that she’s next to him, like one of those soviet-era satellites that refuses to get knocked out of orbit. Because that’s the kind of person Gerri is. Unobstructive, unobtrusive, until you push. And oh shit, how he’s _pushed._

He’s also loath to admit that Business Casual is the worst kind of corporate bullshit ever invented—because why the fuck would you bother with anything more when a travelling capsule from Prada does the job just fine, thank you, and also like dressing up in a polo and a vest top is going to make it any more palatable when Dad sticks his wanger down some grovelling midscale media property to suck them bone-dry? 

But, her. Dressed like that. 

He’s going to personally make sure that Ralph Lauren gets a fucking personal thanks and a blowjob for how good she looks. 

And of course, standing in the freezing cold and barely caffeinated and both jet lagged and overwired at once, Roman Roy pops a boner in his pants.

If Gerri sees it, she doesn’t say anything.

“Could save you the company pension, you could get a full time degree chaperoning me at international events. The sushi at the Olympics? _Outstanding,_ ” he says.

She barely looks up, fingers flying across her phone. “You could not pay me nearly enough.”

“Why, this the first time someone’s paid you for sex? Thought you were getting plenty rammed with the cruise ship majiggo.”

“Roman, you really are a basket case of unresolved issues, you realise this, right?” 

She’s not looking at him, and he finds that in this moment, he really needs her to. It’s bullshit, this feeling, that he craves her validation like it’s sunlight.

“Humour me, Gerri. Since it's cross-examination time, apparently. Why don’t you just retire?”

Now that gets her attention. She stops thwacking her thumbs across the keyboard for the briefest of seconds, and in the moment of silence he wonders if this is finally the thing that would fuck it up. That after weeks of clandestine meetings and dismissals and consensual browbeating, this is the dumb domino that pushes them over the edge.

She doesn’t care. She doesn’t want hi...the family business. She’s going to leave. 

“It may not have occurred to you in your twenty-stupid-and-self-inflicted-regrettable years of existence, but I actually enjoy my job.”

“Why, what’s Dad got on you? Really.”

Gerri rolls her eyes and continues typing. He knows it isn’t worth pushing right now, and that the only thing more precious to Gerri Kellman, more than her ex-husband, more than her sensible loafers, probably more than her life, is that job of hers. And in a way she is on his payroll, so it just makes the whole power dynamic between them even more fucked up, somehow.

He’s still mulling this over as the line moves forward, incrementally. The people in front and behind seem equally engrossed in their own miserable and equally boring universes of trophy fishing talk and eco-retreats, so there really isn’t much for Rome to do than wait this out.

Then, suddenly, a gunshot. The noise shattering into his consciousness, a cut that bleeds out his worst fears: he’s back in Turkey. He’s hiding under the table. He’s about to shit himself and he remembers – is he really gonna die in here like a goddamned coward nobody? His family will hold a funeral for him where Tabitha might crack a wry fucking joke while his siblings do all the public displays of depression that are required of the Roys, but he just fucking knows, _knows_ that at the rotten core of it all, they’re probably not really sorry. Another piece off the chessboard for them, on the way to the throne. 

The worst part isn’t that he didn’t have anything to show for his sad little life. The worst part is that this close to the end of it all, nobody would _really_ miss him.

The world starts spinning. It’s an overcast day, but he’s seeing flashes of white. 

His therapist had warned him about post-traumatic stress. 

(His therapist is overpaid and stupid.)

“Roman. Are you alright?” 

It takes him a second to register that it’s her. Her voice, like a lifebuoy in the inky black. He looks down. Clear nails, and her firm grip. Her hand wrapped awkwardly around his arm.

She won’t look at him, but she’s there. 

His cheese-grater, potato-hacky-sack, broken-down-and-put-back-together excuse of a brain ping pongs between a series of highly inconvenient memories.

That time his hand was on the foggy mirror while she shoved her fingers in his mouth and he came in the bathroom of the Gulfstream.

That time she pointed at the hardwood floor and made him kneel while he jerked off, and he liked it.

That time she wore that bumfuck ugly terrycloth robe and made makeshift handcuffs out of masking tape and made him eat her out like it was a four-course meal.

That time he wasn’t even that drunk, but they were in her living room after one of their typically unhinged and indecipherable sex-adjacent sessions (Is she his counselor? Is he an amusement? Are they both idiots? Highly likely); and the words had come out of nowhere and he’d spat out “marry me” _again_ while his dad’s federal deposition was playing on the TV screen. And all she’d done was bark out a laugh and say, “no, I’m too busy.”

He has no idea what to do with this avalanche of information.

And he has no idea why she’s still here. Well, he’s got some idea. But the shaking of his hands and his fast-dropping blood pressure isn’t doing much to help the situation.

“Roman. I need you to breathe. It was just from the forest. Someone letting off fireworks a little early.” 

“I’m fine,” he says. He aims for nonchalant, but it really comes out more of a squeak.

“Come on now. In, out. In, out.”

“Yeah. Heard that one before. Usually accompanied by the sound your mom makes when—”

“Okay. Now there are coping mechanisms, and then there are times when I need you to just shut the fuck up and listen to what I’m trying to tell you.”

“Is there a problem?” Rome says. He can feel himself going wild-eyed. His stomach’s rioting, and his hands going numb.

“You seem to be having a panic attack.”

“I figured that much, thank you, Gerri. Do we bill you for stating the fucking obvious, too?”

“We both know that’s not how in-house counsel works.”

“Shit, don’t they have a sharing platform for your services, or something? Sounds like a pretty delicious investment proposition to me.”

But whatever she’s doing, staying with him, talking him down, seems to be working. Because he can feel the circulation returning into his hands, the edges of his vision are starting to come back into focus. When his body isn’t busy waging Gettysburg on his critical functions, he realizes that instead of the weird looks everybody else is giving him, Gerri is looking at him like she actually cares.

_Well, that’s nice._

Inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth. Affirmations for the internally conflicted: you are not flotsam. You have utility. You will wake up and choose constructive actions today that will not cause self-inflicted harm as a barely-disguised coping mechanism for your childhood trauma when your brothers and sisters once locked you in an actual cage while mommy wasn’t around to help, and then made fun of you until you pissed yourself. 

_This is fine._

“I know you’re fine. But people are staring. I need you to get up. ” Gerri says. (Did he voice that out loud?)

Regardless, there’s a passing shadow of worry on her face before she irons it into placidity. With her help, he dusts off his knees and stands, the boxing match of self-doubt and anger and patheticness barely at bay after this horrifying public display of dimwittery.

It tumbles out of him before he can stop it. Call it a fight or flight, call it latent foot-in-mouth disease crawling out of his lizard brain because he’s just remembered his near-death experience and apparently that can elucidate some shit.

“Why are you here?” Rome asks. It’s a command, but it’s an entreaty, wrapped in a fucking plea also wrapped in a question. Even though he technically doesn’t have any sway over her, and she’s supposed to protect the fortress that he hides behind. And yet she gives him all the power that he so needs – and he doesn’t know what to do with it. Doesn’t know how to channel it except to put the mirror back at her so she can see how he cuts at the heart of him, the pathetic little prince who’s bleeding. 

She raises her eyebrows back at him. The upward quirk of one above the other telegraphing that this is patently ridiculous, and she entertains him anyway. 

“Because,” Gerri says, re-buttoning her jacket and picking her bag up from the floor, “empires don’t sustain themselves, and every imperial army needs a sludge-pusher. Wouldn’t you agree?”

There’s nothing to do but stare at the side of her face while she plays tippity tappity with her inbox once more. Rome stares ahead, wondering about administrations and all the rooms he can’t see. Handshakes behind closed doors, promises made and broken, shadow puppets pulling strings where half the board can’t even read the moves yet. 

He’s still thinking about it, when Yi Ke shows up again, panting. Suit jacket creased at the waist from where she’d obviously been sprinting through the crowd. The changeover of watchwomen between Gerri and his assistant is a barely perceptible nod, the proprietary language of women where they somehow tell each other things with a single gesture: something he can read, an outsider, but never quite weaponised in his arsenal of useless things and knowledge.

He feels the brush of Ger’s shoulder on his, before she walks off. 

“If you need me.” The slide of a key card into his pocket. Unembossed, unnumbered. “25B.”

He blinks away his surprise. He’d thought she wasn’t interested after Turkey.

Without a word, Gerri walks away. Funny that the human equivalent of an explosive device can be so well-disguised in a camel-coloured cardigan. 

Yi Ke stares after the other woman, then turns her attention back to Rome. She assesses that there’s no visible external damage, presses a comb and an ambien into Roman’s hand (the latter of which he refuses), and checks the itinerary on her screen one more time.

“So did you find Jorge? Or – gross – yourself?” Rome starts.

Yi Ke guffaws. “I’m sorry, that was bad, even for you.”

“Cut me some slack, will you?”

“Sure. Reminder of a near-death experience. Long day ahead. You got this.” 

It’s how good Yi Ke is that he doesn’t even need to say it to her, and he already knows she’s about to hit the speed-dial on her phone to Karolina, and get the tabloid coverage of his little incident sniped before it hits. Because he, of all people, knows that the only thing 1% assholes like him love more than money? Is a goddamned scandal.

Nosy fucker that he is, he peers down at Yi Ke’s screen.

“Why’s Karolina saved in your phone as ‘cynomys’?”

“Oh, that? Inside joke amongst the EAs’ pool.”

“The fuck is a cynomys? Elon Musk’s latest wank-job attempt to Jules Verne his way to the center of the planet?”

Yi Ke’s voice is placating, like she’s explaining basic multiplication to a toddler. “No. Cynomys is the scientific name for a prairie dog.”

“Shit. Nicknames?! Wait, what’s mine?”

“I wouldn’t be at liberty to say.”

“C’mon.”

“No.”

“You’re legally required to tell me.”

“Nope, I’m not. Gerri said so.”

“Does Gerri have one?”

“Yeah.”

“What is it.”

“Hmmmmm.” Yi Ke says, mock-innocent. “Maybe you should head into 25B later and ask her.” 

Then the line’s moving again, but he’s not. It takes a second for him to clock that Yi Ke knows. And it’s not like he or Gerri have been especially subtle about it, but it’s the naked truth of it in his face. The audacity of the situation, the cliché that his assistant has held the knowledge and accumulated capital on it, waiting for the right damn moment to unleash the punchline.

It’s exactly what he would do, and it makes him pretty fucking delighted, if he’s gonna be honest.

Finally, it’s euphoria, it's vindication. It’s the tantalizing prospect of more people finding out, and the fact that probably most of them already know. It’s the freefall of thinking that maybe it’s not so fucking bad if people talk, after all. 

For a full fifteen seconds, Rome _howls_ with laughter. 

He ignores Yi Ke, with a hand over her face, pretending that she doesn’t know him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I cannot wait to see what S3 has to throw at both of these characters. Whew.
> 
> Kudos, concrit, comments, all welcome~
> 
> Yell at me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/bobaheadshark) or [Tumblr](http://tumblr.com/bobaheadshark) \- drabbling across more fandoms recently but am mostly reylo 🤡✌️


End file.
